The Laurens County Water and Sewer Commission is going to issue $3.9 Million in bonds to repay a loan from the federal government to re-hab aging sewer lines near Clinton.
The project will allow development of 800 acres of former Whitten Center property - a portion potentially to a large-acre-lots subdivision and other land, on the other side of I-26, to a massive industrial park.
The commission’s board authorized the bonds at its meeting last Tuesday morning.
The Miller’s Fork Sewer Improvement will be financed by a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan at 2.125% interest, repayable over 40 years.
“We will be able to serve any industrial prospect that Clinton has,” LCWSC Executive Director Jeff Field told the board.
Clinton has not outlined precisely what it wants to do with the Whitten Center property, deemed “surplus” by the State of South Carolina, now that the population at the Whitten Regional Center is a fraction of what it used to be (due to changes in the way mentally challenged people receive treatment).
The sewer lines involved in this project are aged, Field said, and the re-hab will allow almost 1 Million gallons per day of sewage discharge to go to the commission’s treatment plant near Joanna. LCWSC is planning a major re-hab there also, but it’s a longer range project.
The project will upgrade the Sandy Creek pump station, which now pumps very seldom, but will be relied upon to pump more if the Whitten Center property develops. Clinton has the potential at the Whitten site on the north side of I-26 (behind a SC Department of Transportation maintenance shed) to develop the largest untapped industrial site between Greenville-Spartanburg and Columbia; it would be about a 2-hour trip to the Port of Charleston.
“This will benefit everyone in that area and the City of Clinton,” Field said.
This is one of items that could be included on a first-ever LCWSC Strategic Plan. The board voted to authorize $52,500 to get started on that planning, which is much more comprehensive than a Capital Improvements Plan.
A Strategic Plan takes into consideration populations trends and market conditions when recommending courses of action.
Field said, “We have our heads down working on things. Sometimes, you have to look up and see how things are going.”
The plan will be designed to be update-able every 3 - 5 years, “as things change,” he said.
Field said the Strategic Plan could help LCWSC answer the question, “What does our community want from us?”
Field said the ReWa system is building a huge sewer line in Northern Laurens County and LCWSC must know, “how do we tie into that system?” Also, he said, “We have to be able to respond to LCDC when they bring us an industrial project.”
Total spending on the Strategic Plan is expected to be $128,000.
LCWSC expects during the planning process to have a project kickoff meeting, input from internal and external stakeholders (including employees and customers), face-to-face meetings and surveys, and a planning retreat. Field said the proposal to the full board to authorize the plan’s spending came from a Policy Committee meeting in September. “We can’t take a bad direction, but we want to take the best path forward,” Field said.
The commission board also received the annual, independent audit from Will Walls, representing Love Bailey Associates. The agency received an unmodified (clean) opinion, and there are no findings or major recommendations. Wall said an audit of this type is not to detect fraud and is not to tell the board what should be the direction of the agency. For the first time, the board is seeing a 3-year comparison side-by-side of its audited finances.
LCWSC has more cash going out than coming in because it is investing in new water meters and making debt payments. The commission now has 52 employees, up from 42 in 2022.
